Fifth Sunday After Easter.
The Christian's Jacob's Ladder.
" Religion clean and undefiled before God and the Father, is this: to visit the fatherless and widows in their tribulation, and to keep oneself unspotted from this world." — James i. 27.
SYNOPSIS.
Ex.: I. Ideal life. II. Charity, prayer, clean heart. III. Inversion.
I. Undefiled : 1. Occasions of sin. 2. Israelitic defilements. 3. Cover on vessel.
II. Prayerful : 1. Pray always. 2. Vocal and mental. 3. Effects of prayer.
III. Charitable: 1. Life's miseries and blessings. 2. Nobility of poor. 3. Charity's effect.
Per.: 1. Reversion. 2. Our sinfulness. 3. Our Jacob's ladder.
SERMON.
Brethren, in to-day's Epistle and Gospel, if taken and studied together, you will discover the outlines of an ideal Christian life. Our Lord's discourse on prayer is supplemented by St. James's definition of religion clean and undefiled before God and the Father. To suppose that Christian perfection consists altogether in contemplation or lip service is to deceive ourselves. We must not only be hearers but doers of the word, for it is not the man who saith " Lord, Lord," but he who doth the Father's will, that is saved. Righteousness demands, therefore, that the Christian, besides being possessed of a prayerful spirit, should plunge into the thick of life's activities, bear the full weight of life's inevitable
